With the e-commerce boom of 2020, as well as changes in data permissions, it’s evident that having up-to-date, accurate customer data is the most effective way to provide customers with the experiences they want, while also generating the bottom-line results brands want.
To create a winning consumer experience, brands rely on personalization. However, personalization demands a large amount of good data. But sometimes data is stored in unidentified silos, a separate storage location inaccessible to the rest of the company.
Without a complete client profile, how can organizations expect to obtain the greatest results? Brands with siloed data risk jeopardizing their relationships with the customers.
However, it’s encouraging that companies are aware of the issue – 54 percent of marketers think fragmented and siloed data are the largest impediments to leveraging customer data, according to Treasure Data’s The State of the Customer Journey in 2019 report.
The increasing growth of e-commerce has introduced a plethora of touch points where valuable personalization data may be obtained, but how successful can digital marketing be if businesses can’t combine all of that data into one coherent profile?
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The top priority of brands aim is to strengthen customer relationships through personalized customer experiences. However, this necessitates centralizing their first-party data so that everyone can see exactly what their customers desire.
Handling a Silo
Silos can no longer exist as businesses expand their digital marketing efforts. While it may cause some procedural and operational disruption for a while, integrating data is the most important task for the foreseeable future.
Audit, Clean and Unite the Data
The first stage is to account for all of the information that the organization has. While an audit may appear onerous, it is the only method to determine the severity of the silos problem. It is crucial to separate the chaff from the usable first-party data that marketers require after identifying the data. This entails checking for accuracy and timeliness. Simultaneously, businesses must research solutions that will best unify analytical dashboards and data, providing them with the most accurate perspective of their entire business.
It’s also a good idea to check into how the team collects and handles data, as well as every tool they use, to see if there are any overlaps that could be streamlined. This can disclose what is and isn’t integrated. It can be used by brands to outline the exact silos they’ll have to break down.
Single Platform is Key
The ultimate solution is an integrated platform, and among the numerous varieties available, the Customer Data Platform (CDP) and the Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) are effective not just at unifying data but also at giving insights into what customers desire most from the business.
A single platform also keeps teams and departments on pace to meet the company’s overall retention and revenue objectives.
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Integrating the Stack
While this single platform eliminates many of the tech stack issues, businesses will almost certainly need to invest in streamlined integration, preferably with an open architecture that allows them to connect to whatever system the brand employs. They may need to look for apps with native integrations and open APIs to reduce the amount of time their IT department has to spend developing them and to ensure that they can use them for years to come. Apps that come with built-in use cases are a huge plus.
Finally, integration software should provide businesses with a better understanding and control of their data, allowing them to make more informed business decisions.
When companies break down operational and customer data silos, they can figure out exactly what their consumers want and why they buy. A unified platform and properly integrated technology can also make it easy to calculate the ROI of everything they have done to manage their first-party data like the goldmine it is. This puts companies in the best possible position to provide the finest possible customer experience
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